House of God, Which Is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth
House of God, Which Is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth belongs to the Pentecostal (Trinitarian) family of churches.
Governance: episcopal.
The historically Black Pentecostal body (Keith Dominion) founded through Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate around 1903 — among the first American bodies with a woman as chief overseer — and the home of the "sacred steel" lap-steel-guitar worship tradition.
Congregation count not yet source-verified against RCMS 2020; NULL rather than estimated.
The church Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate built at the turn of the twentieth century — led by women before American women could vote, and the home of the sacred steel guitar.
Heritage
Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate began preaching around 1903 and organized the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, serving as its chief overseer — among the first American church bodies founded and presided over by a Black woman. After her death in 1930 the church continued in several dominions; this body, the House of God, Which Is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, is the line associated with Bishop M. F. L. Keith (the Keith Dominion), headquartered in Nashville. In its congregations the lap and pedal steel guitar became the lead voice of worship — the "sacred steel" tradition that formed musicians from Willie Eason to the Campbell Brothers and Robert Randolph.
Theological family
Trinitarian holiness-Pentecostal in the historically Black stream: new birth, sanctified living, Spirit-filled worship with tongues, and the ordinances kept — with a governing tradition in which women's episcopal leadership has been ordinary from the founder onward.
Who decides what
Episcopal: a chief overseer — an office women have repeatedly held — with bishops (called such regardless of gender) over states and a general assembly for the connection.
What a first-time visitor would find
Worship a visitor will not forget: congregational singing and shouted praise driven by steel guitar played like a preaching voice, drums and dancing before the Lord, testimony, and holiness preaching. The steel is not accompaniment; in this tradition it is the sermon's partner.
What it has always cared about
Women's authority in church office, practiced continuously since the era of Tate herself; the sacred steel repertoire, cultivated for generations inside the church's own conventions; and holiness discipline in the Black church tradition.
Its gift to the wider church
Sacred steel — one of American sacred music's singular traditions, incubated entirely within this small church family and now honored far beyond it — offered from a body that also proved, from about 1903, that a Black woman could found and govern an American denomination.
Commonly confused with
With the Church of the Living God (Christian Workers for Fellowship), William Christian's separate 1889 body, despite overlapping titles; with the other dominions descending from Tate's church, including the Jewell Dominion; and with the Church of God in Christ.
Range of views inside it
Range among congregations in size and musical resources — not every congregation fields a steel band — and across the dominions' distinct administrations, which outsiders routinely conflate.
A note from the mapmakers: We have not verified a congregation count for this body against RCMS 2020, so we publish none. The overlapping titles of the Tate-descended dominions and of William Christian's church defeat name-based matching, and nothing here may be asserted of an individual congregation — including whether steel guitar is part of its worship. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "House of God congregations typically…" and yield to the church's own materials.
Sources: Sacred Steel: Inside an African American Steel Guitar Tradition (Robert L. Stone, University of Illinois Press) · Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism (Estrelda Y. Alexander, IVP Academic) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press)
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